Margaret Heffernan is a businesswoman who now writes about business because nothing she read captured the reality of running companies.

She spent thirteen years working for one large corporation - the British Broadcasting Corporation - where she wrote, directed and produced radio plays and documentaries. Moving to television, she designed and executive produced plays and documentaries, including a thirteen part series on The French Revolution for the BBC and A&E. The series featured, among others, Alan Rickman, Alfred Molina, Janet Suzman, Simon Callow and Jim Broadbent and introduced both historian Simon Schama and playwright Peter Barnes to British television. She also produced music videos with Virgin Records and the London Chamber Orchestra to raise attention and funds for Unicef's Lebanese fund.

Leaving the BBC, she ran the trade association IPPA, which represented the interests of independent film and television producers and was once described by the Financial Times as "the most formidable lobbying organization in England."

In 1994, she returned to the United States where she worked on public affair campaigns in Massachusetts and with software companies trying to break into multimedia. She developed interactive multimedia products with Peter Lynch, Tom Peters, Standard & Poors and The Learning Company. She then joined CMGI where she ran, bought and sold leading Internet businesses, serving as Chief Executive Officer for InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCAST Corporation. She was named one of the Internet’s Top 100 by Silicon Alley Reporter in 1999, one of the Top 25 by Streaming Media magazine and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter. Her "Tear Down the Wall" campaign against AOL won the 2001 Silver SABRE award for public relations.

In 2004, Margaret published The Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters (Jossey-Bass) and in 2007 she brought out How She Does It: How Female Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules for Business Success. She is Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Simmons College in Boston, she sits on the Council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and she continues to work with businesses, write for magazines, in both the United States and United Kingdom. She is married with two children.

www.mheffernan.com

Blog Entries by Margaret Heffernan

Slow Down -- Speed is So Yesterday

Posted February 25, 2009 | 03:32 PM (EST)


"Faster, faster, faster til the love of speed overcomes the fear of death."

That quote, from Hunter Thompson, seems to have been the motto of the last decade. It was made into a poster for the magazine Fast Company -- itself a beacon for business at the speed of...

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Companies, Like Countries, Need to Know What They Stand For

1 Comments | Posted February 5, 2009 | 01:22 PM (EST)


According to the New York Times, bankers are sulking because their reputations are in tatters and they aren't making the money they're used to. Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston, said "this is a terrible way to make a living -- except for the...

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Recession Leadership: Don't Kick the Cat

8 Comments | Posted January 13, 2009 | 10:24 AM (EST)


Think of recessions as tests. Companies that fail them die. Companies that survive live to fight another day. But a few companies emerge stronger than ever. How do they do that? This is the second in a series of blogs about how great businesses have used hard times to strengthen...

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Lessons from a Vineyard: Ignore Predictions

3 Comments | Posted January 6, 2009 | 11:07 AM (EST)


I am so sick of the news. Every time I watch CNBC and see yet another pundit with yet another market prediction, I think of Chateau Musar -- and not just because they make me want to reach for a bottle.

In 1975, Gaston Hochar ran...

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What Do Business Schools Teach Now?

18 Comments | Posted December 17, 2008 | 01:15 PM (EST)


The business landscape looks like nuclear winter: Merrill Lynch, Lehmann Brothers, Bear Stearns gone. Fannie Mae, AIG, GM, Chrysler teetering. In the UK, the City has lost 40,000 jobs and Woolworth's has just cleared out its merchandise and its employees. Any prospective business student would be forgiven for a crisis...

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The Mines are Full of Canaries

Posted October 15, 2008 | 10:32 AM (EST)


In 1988, Muriel Siebert testified before the subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, in the wake of the 1987 market crash. The major problem with the market, she said, was derivatives. "Program trades and index arbitrage end up bringing the volatility and rampant speculation of the futures pits to the...

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Power Failure: McCain's Batteries Are Flat

Posted June 24, 2008 | 11:12 AM (EST)


When politicians really want to show us their ignorance, they pretend to be entrepreneurs. That's certainly what John McCain has done now. A $300 million prize for a "battery package" (whatever that is) that reduces the costs of an automobile by thirty percent sounds great, but really it's no more...

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Mike Leigh, Randy Pausch, Reader's Digest and an End to Miserablism

Posted June 12, 2008 | 01:46 PM (EST)


Lust, Caution. Michael Clayton. In the Valley of Elah. No Country for Old Men. Control. There Will Be Blood. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. All masterpieces in the new genre: the feel-bad movie. Enter feeling fine, exit in despair. People are evil. Love is dead. Altruism's a fantasy....

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Real Artists Ship

Posted May 21, 2008 | 05:24 PM (EST)


How is it that every article and book I read about innovation is so un-innovative? You'd think that, with a subject like that, authors would attempt a modicum of creativity themselves. But instead we get the same old chestnuts: innovations happens when there's a critical mass of unbelievably brilliant, rich...

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Yahoo Is Not the Problem - Microsoft Is

Posted May 7, 2008 | 06:19 PM (EST)


The spectacle of Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo feels like watching two dinosaurs trying to mate: painful and irrelevant. It is revealing not in its denouement but in its genesis. That Microsoft should even consider mounting such a bid shows how that its products have failed and its strategic thinking...

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Nobody Knows Anything

Posted February 29, 2008 | 07:40 PM (EST)


Recession? What recession? Whether you're watching CNBC or just browsing through newsstands, that's what seems to be on everyone's mind. Are we in a disaster, heading for a disaster - or really pretty okay? Pundits on TV screen squack endlessly: we are going down the tubes, we are already at...

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Disunited We Will Never Stand

Posted January 22, 2008 | 05:24 PM (EST)


Last week, it was my turn to drive the carpool. With three nine-year-olds in the back of the car, I listened as they tore their 'girlfriends' to shreds. Miranda is just too skinny. Imogen will never learn to sing in key. And did you see that awful coat Emily was...

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Do You Think America is Doomed?

Posted December 5, 2007 | 05:01 PM (EST)


Do you think America is doomed?

That's the question I was asked at a speaking engagement in Iowa recently. The conference brought together legislators, educators and businesspeople from the 13 Midwest states that face a big problem: automation of agriculture, together with the offshoring of manufacturing, means a net...

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"America's Heart is Good."

Posted November 21, 2007 | 07:44 PM (EST)


Last month, Roy Spence set out to walk from northern New Hampshire, through Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York to Pennsylvania. He threw away his Blackberry and took his first break he'd had since founding GSD&M Idea City, a pioneer in purpose-based branding. Spence enjoys a dazzling reputation as one...

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Led Zeppelin Shows Its Age

Posted October 19, 2007 | 05:28 PM (EST)


So Led Zeppelin has finally decided to sell the digital rights to its music. They're about the last major band to figure out that digital distribution is the shape of things to come. Now it's only The Beatles and Garth Brooks are still locked in the past.

Cutting...

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Of Course You Can Live and Work

Posted October 17, 2007 | 11:47 AM (EST)


Today is Wednesday. All that is special about this particular Wednesday is that my kids are on vacation -- and I'm still working. It isn't working from home that makes this feasible -- if anything, that makes it harder. But my husband has taken the day off so that I...

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The New Protectionism

Posted July 10, 2007 | 02:43 PM (EST)


Forget fair trade with Africa. We don't even have fair trade at home.

There are nearly ten million women-owned businesses in the US -- that's nearly half the private companies in the country. They employ more people than the Fortune 500 globally and they're creating new jobs faster than businesses...

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WSJ: An Old Guy's Plaything

Posted July 3, 2007 | 02:28 PM (EST)


Rupert Murdoch's idea of a good joke? Saying he'll put his infamous 'Page 3' girls into the Wall Street Journal -- but they'll all have MBAs.

Yup, that's had us business women rolling in the aisles. It's so reassuring to know that, if Murdoch gets his hands on the...

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Corporate Kool-Aid Again

Posted June 25, 2007 | 09:39 AM (EST)


Here we go again. Another identikit takeover in which everyone willingly colludes in fantasies history tells them cannot come true. It's not a takeover, it's a merger. Right. Nothing will change. Of course not. The new owners will love and respect tradition. Sure.

Last week, an anonymous journalist at...

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Why Does Microsoft Hate Its Customers?

Posted June 20, 2007 | 12:04 PM (EST)


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To some of you, that equation might be meaningless. To the more scientific among you, it's simple: it describes the store of elastic energy. And, in the scientific community, that energy -- now rage -- is about to snap.

If you wanted to...

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